He struck oil, while we for the most part
succeed in boring only; still we are his literary brethren, and if
we would read his lines intelligently we must also read between
them. That one so shrewd, and yet a dreamer of such dreams as have
been vouchsafed to few indeed besides himself--that one so genially
sceptical, and so given to looking into the heart of a matter,
should have been in such perfect harmony with his surroundings as to
think himself in the best of all possible worlds--this is not
believable. The world is always more or less out of joint to the
poet--generally more so; and unfortunately he always thinks it more
or less his business to set it right--generally more so. We are all
of us more or less poets--generally, indeed, less so; still we feel
and think, and to think at all is to be out of harmony with much
that we think about. We may be sure, then, that Homer had his full
share of troubles, and also that traces of these abound up and down
his work if we could only identify them, for everything that
everyone does is in some measure a portrait of himself; but here
comes the difficulty--not to read between the lines, not to try and
detect the hidden features of the writer--this is to be a dull,
unsympathetic, incurious reader; and on the other hand to try and
read between them is to be in danger of running after every Will o'
the Wisp that conceit may raise for our delusion.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89